broken stone and the ashes of ourselves
by hyacinthian
Summary: He can't look at their eyes. Pre series AU. ToshOwen, SuzieOwen


A/N: The latter lines of dialogue are mostly lines of Eliot's poetry, from The Hollow Men. Which, if you haven't read, is one of my most favorite poems ever.

* * *

_In the room, the women come and go  
Talking of Michelangelo_

-T.S. Eliot

* * *

Suzie stuns him sometimes. All the time. She oozes photons from every skin cell, every pore, and just glitters like a jewel in the sea. But it's not her beauty that traps him. It's her apathy. He's grown up dark and collected, a tiny lump of coal when all his parents could imagine were diamonds. He never imagined feeling the breadth of that emptiness again, never imagined _wanting _to feel it. But Suzy is here with her dark eyes, empty with hollow promises of an abyss, and he stares into them - dark pupils that pull him in closer. He's heard stories about the time vortex at Torchwood - dusty files logged from the 1800s with the mark of the queen and stories of it. He's always wondered if that's what lingers in her eyes. Jack can't stand stories of the vortex, gets itchy with anxiety. Never looks her in the eyes. He used to think it was contempt - now he imagines it to be fear.

He's not as dense as they imagine him to be either. He can see the way Tosh looks at him, feel her slight presence in everything around him. He looks at her sometimes, spies her beauty, her rare moments of true calm, her collected humanity. Sometimes he wonders if she isn't a better person than all the rest of them put together. And that's the thing, the one good act he can stand to do (but it's still a double-edged sword because nothing he ever does can ever be wholly good, never, not since he was ten). He tries to stay away from her for her own good. Because, because what if he does like her? What if he does...feel something for her? It's selfish. If there's one thing he's learned, he's a selfish bastard. But even he can't bring himself to ruin the last flower standing in a forest of weeds.

So he tries. He ignores her, treats her like shit, blatantly publicizes his relationship with Suzie. But she takes it all in stride. She sucks it up and goes on and brings him sandwiches and "Owen, would you like some tea?" and really, he doesn't know what he'd do without her. She always turns her eyes toward him, those big hope-filled eyes that remind him of puppies. And she has to hate him at some point, because, well, he's a bastard. And god if that isn't the biggest metaphor of all. Stumbling drunkenly between a girl with the abyss in her eyes and the girl with hope in them. It shouldn't be that hard of a choice. But it is. Suzie laughs at him sometimes. Derisively, lying there naked in his bed, the sheets pulled greedily up around her, she turns on her side and laughs at him. "She's got the most irritating thing for you, I swear," Suzie said, with a half-sigh. "God, might as well nominate her for the opening ceremony of the Olympics."

And he had rolled over onto his back, stared at the patterns on his ceiling and listened to the sounds of Cardiff at night. "Go to hell, Suze."

"Oh, my god."

"What?"

"You've got a thing for her."

"What?!"

"No, I can totally see it." Her black eyes glint in the dark and he shuts his eyes against them. "Trying to be the next Captain Jack, are we?"

"Get out."

"Oh," she coos, mockingly, turning to rest against him. "Shall we spoon, dear?"

"Suzie, she's your friend."

"We're none of us friends," Suzie replies, huffily. "We just...work together." He looks into her eyes, black and shiny in the dark, hears her laughter. He tries to shut his eyes against it, feels like a child again. It doesn't work. (She just laughs on and on in his head like his mother, and god, the laughs mix and match and torture him until he drinks, drinks, drinks it all away and his mother calls him out for being a drunk and Suzie calls him out for being an asshole, and, and, and)

Christmastime, and Ianto springs for some spiked eggnog, and he loves it. Feels a slow warmth burn through him, and when Tosh asks him if he wants to go for a walk, he obliges because he's pleasantly buzzed. They walk along the water, by the Millennium Centre, and she drags her feet until they slow to a stop. She reaches in her bag and he turns to look at the various shops. "Want some chips?" And when he turns back, she's holding a sprig of mistletoe and suddenly, she's kissing him, all lips and nerves. Until he brushes her hair away from her neck with his free hand and kisses her back.

When he pulls away, she blinks a few times, stunned.

He runs through the gamut of things to say in his head. "Merry Christmas, Tosh. Chips?" He stands and sullenly moves towards a shop. He misses her brief moment of openness, doesn't see her brief look of pain. It doesn't matter. He can feel it, the bitterness, the anger, it seeps through the concrete and through his shoes into his bloodstream. His guilt is enough to make up for it. Except it's not, and they both know it.

New Year's Day and he's halfway to drunk when Suzie finds him. She orders him another drink with a smirk. Her eyes flash dangerously, brilliantly in the light and he feels himself sucked in. She knows it. "Please don't go, sweetheart," she mocks. He finishes his drink and waits for the next one to come. "You need me." And she leans in and kisses him, and somehow, she ends up twined in his lap, tongues and teeth sliding and crashing, and it's all a fight. Always a fight.

"I don't," he says, hoisting himself to his feet. He stumbles a bit on his way out the door, and she cackles. Calls after him.

"I know where you live, sweetheart!" She gulps down her gin and tonic and the black eyes, they shine after him all through Cardiff.

He buys a bottle of whiskey and wanders Cardiff, drinking from it until he can't feel anymore. He wanders, but somehow, he ends up at her flat. Staring at the brass numbers like they were something alien, something that he could dissect. He buzzes her flat. "Hello?"

"S'me," he slurs.

"I'm coming down." And she does - drops to his level, opens the door with her silk robe cinched tightly at the waist, barefoot. She walks down and helps him up, pulls the bottle of Jack Daniels from his hand. "Owen, you're pissed."

"That I am, Tosh."

"I'll make some coffee." She sits with him while she waits for the coffee, perched on the edge of her seat, like he's going to burst out into full-on spasmic convulsions or seizures or something.

"Tosh," he says, rubbing at his temples, "I'm fine. Don't need to look so..."

She doesn't say anything.

"Tosh, I..." His tongue feels looser, lips feel freer, but he can't say anything. So he just leans in and kisses her, captures her lip between his two, and tries to force his passion onto her. He can feel her start to kiss back, feel her own heart. Tosh tugs him by the hand towards her bedroom and he doesn't stop. Just keeps kissing and going, and - it never occurred to him how self-destructive they both are. Just different ways. They etch their mutual destruction in stone. M.A.D. Mad. Crazy. M.A.D. Mutually Assured Destruction. The subtext dies between their lips.

Afterwards, as they lie in a heap of sticky skin and sweat, he disentangles himself and heads for her shower. He reeks of alcohol - it must be escaping through his skin. As he undresses, he tries to pretend he doesn't hear her sobs.

As he leaves, she tries to pretend she's asleep.

Mutually assured destruction. Maybe what he feels is love, he thinks, as he slips his feet into his shoes, and maybe it isn't, but it feels fucked up enough to fit his experiences with love.

Tosh comes into Torchwood the next morning with a travel mug full of stale coffee, kept warm in the carafe all night long. Suzie dangles on Owen's shoulder, kisses him when she thinks no one's looking (or when she knows someone is). Tosh drinks her coffee black, scalds her throat with the liquid.

"Is it like this in death's other kingdom, waking alone at the hour when we are trembling with tenderness? Lips that would kiss form prayers to broken stone."

Owen breaks from Suzie's lips. "Tosh?"

"Eliot," Suzie interjects.

"The eyes are not here," Tosh recites. "There are no eyes here." Suzie smirks and Owen looks back and forth, feeling like two tidal waves are culminating in an enormous eddy and he's caught in the center.

"In this valley of dying stars," Suzie continues, eyes flashing. "In this hollow valley, this broken jaw of our lost kingdoms."

"In this last of meeting places," Tosh says, tears beginning to prick at her eyes, for no conceivable reason.

Suzie picks it up casually, leisurely. "We grope together and avoid speech, gathered on this beach of the tumid river." Plays with her hair, lazily, as if she were a lioness prowling the hunt, knowing her prey.

"Sightless," Tosh cries, "Unless, the eyes reappear..."

"As the perpetual star, multifoliate rose of death's twilight kingdom..."

"The hope only of empty men," Tosh finishes. Her eyes fall to Owen. He clenches his jaw.

"Quiet and meaningless," Suzie says, eyes floating over Tosh with an arched brow, "as wind in dry grass."


End file.
